The Media Frenzy as the Story

Watching Chief Constable Craig Mackey on the news on Thursday evening, I became very distracted by the number of photographers bobbing around in the back of the shot.

The ‘reverse angle’ shot has become a staple of the news photographer’s repertoire (see these British and American examples). An image showing the subject from behind, facing a wall of journalists and camera lenses, is very meta, post-modern, ‘clever’. Such photos make the statement that the importance of the event is proportional to the media frenzy surrounding it.